HBO to Pre-Screen ‘Girls’ Debut in Nine Cities

With the 'Girls' Season 3 premiere only a few weeks away, HBO is planning to kick things off in style by hosting “Girls Night Out” screening events in eight cities around the country on the same night as the series' official New York City premiere, which kicks-off on Monday, Jan. 6 at Lincoln Center, Deadline reports.

The cities participating in the celebrations include Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Philadelphia, San Francisco (delayed), Washington, D.C., and, of course, NYC. A live feed of the New York premiere will also include red carpet arrivals and personalized messages from the show's star and creator Lena Dunham.

Attendees from all the different locales will then be privy to brand new episodes of Season 3 before its big January 12 debut, which will showcase two back-to-back episodes immediately after the premiere of 'True Detective.'

Ratings were down for the series last year, whose second-season finale only drew 632,000 viewers — a sufficiently drop from the 1 million who tuned in to the show’s Season 1 finale the previous year. So it seems these screening events are the network's clever attempt to increase its viewership. We'll just have to wait and see if it works.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the storyline, 'Girls' is a comic look at the assorted humiliations and rare triumphs of a group of girls living in New York City in their 20s. The show stars Dunham (who also executive produces alongside Judd Apatow) as well as Jemima Kirke, Allison Williams, Zosia Mamet, Adam Driver, and Alex Karpovsky.